Empowering Girls to Design_Code_Build

“A truly equal world would be one where women ran half our countries and companies and men ran half our homes.” –Sheryl Sandberg, Lean in: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead

The disparity between men and women who work in the tech industry, and the workforce more generally, existed long before Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, wrote her seminal book Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead. However, the book was a key moment that led to an increased focus on the barriers that women face in the workforce and how the system as a whole can break down those barriers.

Design_Code_Build is a program of interactive STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) events led by the Computer History Museum. These events are typically geared toward kids from low-income families or groups with less access to technology and coding. This Saturday, October 17th, they are having an all-girls event where the newest member of our User Experience (UX) team, Jenn Tran, will speak to 6th-8th grade girls about how she has navigated her career in the tech industry.

Jenn Tran, Senior UX Designer at Nitro

A certified “Jill-of-all-trades,” Jenn, Senior UX Designer here at Nitro, has worked in various roles in her career: from HR to Design to UX, and even a brief stint at McDonald’s. Her passion for technology started at an early age when she utilized HTML and CSS to build websites for fun, and later on, for high school social clubs. Her affinity to technology eventually evolved into an interest in human-computer interaction.

Throughout her career, she says that the thing that she values the most in any role is the relationships with her coworkers, stating: “I can be excited about any problem or product, but my inspiration really comes from the people that I work with.” Jenn is especially inspired by the impassioned way that her female coworkers approached their work and how they facilitate environments where questions, big or small, are encouraged.

Jenn aims to create this same space where young girls can openly ask questions and get inspired about working with technology, so when an old worker asked her to speak at this event she jumped at the opportunity. She is passionate about building the foundation in tech for the next generation of women, and pass on the same drive that her female role models have inspired in her. She says that as long as she can inspire just one girl in the audience on Saturday, then she can be feel accomplished.

In her free time, Jenn is an avid hiker and nature enthusiast, which has taken her places like Crater Lake and even Nepal. She says that disconnecting from media takes her “back to the basics” and enhances her ability to understand a user’s experience. When she isn’t casually trekking through the Himalayas, she enjoys following various blogs about digital media and design, such as Invision and Medium.